Prof. Kecskes will give us a second talk in Kyoto, on the next day from the PSJ Conference.

Abstract

The socio-cognitive approach (SCA) to pragmatics initiated by Kecskes (2010, 2014) integrates the pragmatic view of cooperation and the cognitive view of egocentrism and emphasizes that both cooperation and egocentrism are manifested in all phases of communication, albeit to varying extents. While cooperation is an intention-directed practice that is governed by relevance, egocentrism is an attention-oriented trait dominated by salience which is a semiotic notion that refers to the relative importance or prominence of signs. One of the main differences between current pragmatic theories and SCA is that there is no “impoverished” speaker meaning in SCA. The speaker utterance is a full proposition with pragmatic features reflecting the speaker’s intention and preferences and expressing the speaker’s commitment and egocentrism (in the cognitive sense). The proposition expressed is “underspecified” only from the hearer’s perspective but not from the speaker’s perspective. Second, communication is a dynamic process, in which individuals are not only constrained by societal conditions but they also shape them at the same time. As a consequence, communication is characterized by the interplay of two sets of traits that are inseparable, mutually supportive, and interactive:

Individual traits: Social traits:

prior experience actual situational experience

salience relevance

egocentrism cooperation

attention intention

In SCA interlocutors are considered as social beings searching for meaning with individual minds embedded in a socio-cultural collectivity. Individual traits (prior experience à salience àegocentrism à attention) interact with societal traits (actual situational experience à relevance àcooperation à intention). Each trait is the consequence of the other. Prior experience results in salience which leads to egocentrism that drives attention. Intention is a cooperation-directed practice that is governed by relevance which (partly) depends on actual situational experience.